Kitchen Queries

Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions. We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

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Spanish Chicken In A Slow Cooker

My family just love Nigella's Spanish Chicken With Chorizo and Potatoes. However my situation has changed and I was wondering if it is possable to do this in a slow cooker. If so how would i abjust the cooking time to do so and would I need to add anything extra to it? Peter

Posted by hellsownson. Answered on 4th Mar 2014 at 12.00

From the nigella team:

Nigella's Spanish Chicken With Chorizo and Potatoes is cooked in the oven on shallow roasting pans. As the dish cooks the oil from the chorizo melts out and flavours the potatoes, which roast to a crisp finish. The chicken skin and slices of chorizo will also burnish and crisp up in the hot oven.

Unfortunately we would not advise cooking this dish in a slow cooker as a slow cooker is not really suitable for roasted meats and potatoes. A slow cooker is designed to cook meats at a very low temperature and in a sligjtly moist environment, usually with some liquid in the pot. They are good for tougher cuts of meat that need very slow cooking, such as braises or stews. If you attempted the Spanish Chicken in a slow cooker then there will not be enough heat to roast the chicken and potataoes. Instead they will steam and become soft, and will be sitting in the oil coming from the chorizo which would make the potatoes feel slightly greasy.

If you are looking for a slow cooker recipe then you could try Nigella's Slow-Cooker Lamb and Pasta recipe on the Nigella website, or one of her stews from Nigella's website or books. The handbook for your slow cooker should give guidelines on the timings for stews.